I just posted my presentation about the Search in Japan from International Search Summit in London last month.

As you can see, my presentation shows bunch of numbers, which don’t mean much to you unless you were in the audience. Here’s what I talked about.

Market:
94 million Internet users
75.3% Penetration rate
4% access Internet from TV and gaming devices
73.4% on Broad Band
90% of 13-49 yrs old are on Internet
64% of people in 50s are on Internet
99% of businesses are on Internet
51% of businesses have E-commerce site

E-Commerce:
54% of PC users have shopped online – $35.85 billion market
31% of mobile users have shopped online – $7.85 billion market

Web:
78 million Internet users from PC
31% of businesses advertise online – $4.5 billion market
JP domain and file name
ccTLD in Japanese characters become available in 2010

Search:
Yahoo Japan (53%) vs Google Japan (47%)
Both engines give keyword assist (as shown on slide)
Review what shows up in the keyword assist when selecting target keywords
Vertical search engines such as Yahoo Shopping, Rakuten Travel, etc. are very popular.

Mobile:
74 million mobile Internet users
50% use filtering – some sites may not be seen via mobile
$1.3 billion spent on mobile ads in 2008
Each mobile company has own set of official websites including official search engine – Create a mobile site that is optimized for multiple engines.

Social media:
Most social media sites are available for both PC and mobile web
30% of businesses have blog or social media account/page
10% of businesses advertise on social media sites
mixi, gree and mbga are the 3 largest SNS in Japan. Each has unique user profile, so target SNS that is strong against your target market age/gender.

Tools:
Western made tools often times don’t work with double byte characters, but many tools are now available in multi-lingual. Select the tools that works for all of your target markets.